Conservative Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) complained on Monday about having to be present for the Senate’s vote on Republicans’ marquee budget bill, which is projected to lead to thousands of deaths and strip millions of health insurance.
The senator, who has become infamous for his blasé attitude toward his job and his staunch pro-Israel stance, moaned that he’s missing his family’s beach vacation for the Senate’s “vote-a-rama” on the Republican bill.
“Oh my god, I just want to go home. I’ve already — I missed our entire trip to the beach,” he said, shaking his head, after being asked by a reporter about the timing of the Senate’s vote. “I’m gonna vote no, there’s no drama, we know the votes are going to go.”
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“I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here until some ungodly hour,” Fetterman said. Fetterman’s statements were first posted online by CBS producer Alan He.
The comments expose an attitude of apathy and annoyance that the senator has toward performing the basic functions of his job — in this case, being present to vote on a bill dubbed by colleague Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) as “the most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country” and a “death sentence for low-income and working-class people.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would cut over $1 trillion from Medicaid, and kick 11.8 million people off of their health insurance. Previous estimates under a less drastic version of the legislation by health experts have found that the bill would lead to 51,000 excess deaths across the U.S. annually.
Meanwhile, the bill would represent one of the largest redistributions of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single piece of legislation, reducing the wealth of the poorest households by $1,600 annually on average while funnelling $12,000 to the richest households yearly.
“This bill is the biggest transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1% and Fetterman’s message to voter[s] is that he just wants to go home,” wrote Joe Calvello, Fetterman’s former communications director.
Other lawmakers have spoken passionately against the bill. Even Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) took to the Senate floor to criticize the bill, breaking from his party.
The bill will directly affect people in Fetterman’s home state of Pennsylvania.
An analysis by Sanders’s office released last month found that, over the next decade, the proportion of uninsured people would increase by 59 percent in the state. The Institute for Policy Studies and the Economic Policy Institute found in a report earlier this month that the bill puts Medicaid benefits at risk for 444,000 people and food benefits at risk for 401,000 people in Pennsylvania.
However, as many have noted over the past months, Fetterman seems to reserve his zeal for one thing: backing Israel and criticizing those, like anti-genocide protesters, who disagree with him.
Fetterman has been heavily criticized since taking office for his attitude toward the job. An exposé by New York Magazine last month showed that many of his staff and those close to him have expressed concerns about his ability to perform his job, with the senator frequently complaining about doing basic parts of his job.
He has among the most absences from votes of any other member of Congress and has regularly missed committee hearings. NBC reported in May that Fetterman had skipped 25 out of 26 hearings or business meetings by the Senate Commerce Committee thus far in 2025 — and only attended his first one after the New York Magazine piece was published. The Senate, notably, already has a heavily truncated schedule compared to regular full-time workers in the U.S.
Fetterman’s comment adds to a bevy of callous statements about the bill made by conservative lawmakers. Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) brushed off criticisms of the bill’s impacts on Medicaid, saying those who lose it as a result of the bill will “get over it.” Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), responding to constituents’ concerns that people would die as a result of the legislation last month, said, “well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes.”
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